Jonathan Gold was able to provide context that added unparalleled depth to his reviews:

“Mayura specializes in the cooking of Kerala, the strip of southern India that touches the Arabian Sea, a cosmopolitan region, shaped by a thousand years of spice trading, whose food is influenced by Nayar Hindus, Muslims, Syrian Christians and even an ancient community of Jews. [...] You probably have seen avial, a Kerala-style dish of julienne vegetables sautéed with coconut, which has made it onto many local Indian menus, but Mayura’s version is especially good, luscious but still slightly crunchy, as useful as a condiment as it is satisfying as a main dish.” [LAW]

The Times critic’s review saved the early Night + Market from closure:

“You’ve probably heard about Yenbamroong’s pad Thai, which is the minimal, barely sweetened version you can never find even in L.A., and the big curried crab, and the occasional special of nam prik ong, a Northern Thai chile sauce you scoop up with fresh vegetables. There is a thick, intense kao soi, the Chiang Mai–style noodles with lime and coconut milk. [...] Have you ever felt as if a restaurant was just waiting for you to walk into it?” [LAW]

His pick of Vespertine as number one restaurant in LA was rather controversial:

“If you were looking for the oddest dish being served in an American restaurant right now, you should probably start with the fish course at Jordan Kahn’s new Vespertine, a dish that nudges the idea of culinary abstraction dangerously close to the singularity. It doesn’t look like fish, for one thing — it looks rather like an empty bowl, coarse and pebbly inside and out, of a blackness deep enough to suck up all light, your dreams and your soul.” [LAT]

His reviews had the ability to transform once unheard of restaurants to local legends:

“And at the center of almost all of the platters on the tables — as if by a kind of gravitational pull — is Agonafer’s doro wot, the intense, long-cooked, chile-spiked chicken stew that is so intrinsic to Ethiopian cuisine that, says Agonafer, in the arranged marriages that are still commonplace in her native country, ‘the guy, before he even looks at you, he tastes the doro wot: It’s that important.’” [LAT]

Few Koreans had the same knowledge of Korean cuisine as Jonathan Gold:

“Then the crab came out of the kitchen, two neatly bisected blue crabs, not transformed by rice wine, as is the norm, but by what seemed to be a soy-tinged distillation of the animal’s juices, crabbier than the crab itself. When you sucked at a leg, the flesh pulled cleanly away from the shell, firm but not cooked, briny and sweet. The crab was nearly glazed with big clumps of roe. The carapace brimmed with musky juice — you spoon hot rice into the shell and eat it. The best single dish in L.A.? Hard to say. But a reason to keep Soban on speed dial.” [LAW]

In a tribute to Jitlada’s Tui Sungkamee, the Goldster was able to relay the profound effect the local chef had on teaching Angelenos about regional Thai cooking:

“You could play it safe with curried mussels and the crunchy salad made with fried morning glory, but you will have missed a bit of the wildness in Suthiporn “Tui” Sungkamee’s cooking. On the other hand, curried fish kidneys and fried silkworms with chile may not be your jam — but if you try to meet Jitlada halfway, you need never be bored.” [LAT]

No one could wax poetic about organ soup quite like Gold:

“Thai Town’s boat-noodle wars show no signs of abating, and there may be no end of Thai cafés in the neighborhood claiming to serve the best, the most authentic version, but the homely virtues of Sapp become more apparent by the year. Sapp’s boat noodles are magnificent: murky, organ-rich beef soup amplified with shrieking chile heat, thickened with blood, the tartness of lime juice locked in muscular poise with the brawny muskiness of the broth. Sapp may be the best lunchroom in Hollywood, crowded at noon not with revelers but with people who have come to Thai Town to shop and eat the boat noodles, the grilled chicken and the bright-green “jade” noodles tossed with bits of Chinese barbecue.” [LAW]

Restaurants are now considered icons have J. Gold to thank for spreading their gospels:

“But Guelaguetza is one of the best Oaxacan restaurants in the country — when you’re in the mood for shared botana platters, you can get vast piles of white Oaxacan cheese served with lard-soaked memelas, the giant Oaxacan pizzas called clayudas, heaps of fried empanadas, or even a platter with chicken, bowls of four different moles, and the fresh tortillas to eat them with.” [LAW]

The critic would put tens of thousands of miles annually on his iconic truck to hunt down what are now largely considered some of the city’s best tacos:

“The truck is parked in its usual spot, and we acquire paper platesful of the tacos, fried crisp around the edges but pliable toward their bellies, drenched with a fresh chop of tomatoes and onions, with ripe avocado on the side. The taco tastes of salt and corn and clean oil, and then, as you crunch through it, of fresh shrimp. I ask Ortega where he buys his seafood, and as always he changes the subject. I conjecture whether the slight creaminess around the shrimp comes from potatoes, bechamel or cheese, and as always, he smiles and shrugs. They are his secrets. He hopes they will make his daughters rich.” [LAT]

The critics knowledge of regional Chinese cooking brought droves of locals east to explore the San Gabriel Valley:

“If your experience of Sichuan food is mostly from the Chongqing-style places that have popped up in the San Gabriel Valley in the last few years, you will probably find this Chengdu-style cooking lighter, cleaner and less likely to wake you up in the middle of the night with chile-oil induced nightmares. The food is still quite spicy, flavored with a vast array of fresh, dried, pickled and ground chiles, but the vivid scent of Sichuan peppercorn comes to the front in quite a few dishes, and the overwhelming sensation, even in dishes common to both kinds of restaurants, like the sliced beef in chile oil called fu qi fei pian, mapo tofu, or the chile-accented room-temperature noodles called dan dan mian, is of numbness rather than pain.” [LAT]

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic could describe a dish like xian bing with almost lyrical prose:

“But we know why we’re here. And as promised, xian bing are hot when you pick them up, finger-scorchingly hot, like a potato snatched straight from the embers, and the texture, although you sense a faint crackliness, is thin, warm and pliable, like skin. The menu warns you that it’s hot, and the waitress warns you that it’s hot, and the woman at the next table warns you, too, but there is probably nothing that can prepare you for the act of biting into a too-hot xian bing, when a jet of pressurized soup, as volatile as the steam from Old Faithful, arcs over your shoulder and drips harmlessly down the plate glass behind you. Fancy a duel? Let’s specify xian bing at dawn.” [LAW]